Pictures and Presidents

[altarflame]

This isn't the best picture to showcase it, but Elise was looking REALLY cute when we got back from that Mardi Gras thing last week.


At the theater to see Wizard of Oz - Ananda, Karen, Jeffrey, Isaac, Joanne, Aaron.








Yesterday Grant got a work order down in the Keys, so he left VeriFone and we all went down and when he was done, went over to Anne's Beach. While he was working, the kids and I were just hanging out and decided to go get some floats.

We decided to get Extreme Floats.

It was not easy to cram them in the van, even with the sliding side doors.

I LOVE this picture :)



















Then today, Nancy came and hung out with us - which was great. Ananda ran to her with arms thrown wide as soon as the door opened. She came in with big bags of presents, and I made a big lunch of veggies and chicken and things with orzo. She brought an uber-crunchy boxed mix for monkey bread that I baked this afternoon, too, so yummy. It was so awesome to just sit and catch up. There've been phone calls and emails - a dozen of each at least - since I left Boston, but it's different, you know? Especially with both of us being too busy to ever really go in depth through long distance communication. It's good to be "friends" now, too, and not have her keeping me at Professional Midwife Level Conversation, i.e., not saying anything that would be unprofessional about anyone or anything else. My sister came and met her. And I managed to get her to agree to pictures knowing I'd post them on my blog, which she sees as famous or something because within her circle of birth people, apparently everybody reads.


Elise loves her. And she cried when Elise walked to me, and waved to her, and backed down our step to the dining room, and all the other little things Elise does that are not just normal but double-take advanced for a 9 month old. She's holding her, here, and that's the back of Brian's head down in front. Look at this organized crowd :p



Grant got the job I talked about a few days ago, except the day shift, which is an added bonus. It's every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and every other Wednesday, 12 hour shifts (7:30am-7:30pm). $38k a year plus benefits after some period or other passes, with hours that will allow him to keep VeriFone, and the bank, and have whole uninterrupted days with us.

I don't know much of anything about Mike Huckabee except that he was on the Colbert show tonight, and cracking up with some double entendres as he played air hockey to try to "win Texas". That might be enough for me O_o I suppose I have to look up some more stuff. I've avoided bringing it up here thus far, but I am really anti-socialist policies. I want to keep my homeschooling freedoms, and I want women to have more birth freedoms, and I even prefer my own personal healthcare situation (choosing to pay out of pocket for our ped of choice who rocks, fighting for Medicaid but getting it in the end for Elise, her and I both getting all the emergent care we needed with bills coming later, all of it) than what I've heard of government health care. I really really REALLY like SMALL government more and more, the more I learn, even when it means that things I'm "Against" get to be done/legal/whatever (like abortion or guns). I don't want a draft, I don't want insane property taxes and death taxes on estates you leave to your kids and on and on, I don't want anyone up in my business. I'm a freewheeling libertarian Ron Paul supporter. I think :p Whenever I hear Obama or Hillary talking, they sound so freaking socialist and the end result is inevitably peoples' freedoms being taken away, in ways that scare me. It's like everyone's forgotten what we all learned in high school history - communism only works in theory. Capitalism DOES take care of (almost) everyone in the end because of the trickle-down effect wealth in a nation like ours has, and it gives everyone the opportunity to strive and reach further and achieve that American Dream if that's what they're after...

I think of really liberal, progressive areas of our country where people like Hillary are popular, like New York City, and it's like...people in New York have no birth freedom at all. They imprison midwives, Nancy told me when I was in Massachusetts that if I were to go into labor while she was in Syracuse for the ICAN conference, she'd have to cross back over to do my birth. They have all these seemingly great initiatives in place for new low income mothers, too...where they strongly discourage co-sleeping and widely teach that you must vaccinate and all this. Moms who do things in "unusual" ways that are ignorantly thought to be unsafe are reported to CPS. Homeschooling is extremely rare, it's just...crap, as far as I'm concerned. That's not what I want.

But of course you can't find a likely candidate who is small government AND cares about the environment (which I do). Enter Ron Paul. Who is not likely :/

I have to wash ye olde dishes.

Comments

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

But both parents working is not one person on one minimum wage job. That's TWO incomes. And yeah I think it would be great, obviously, if it was easier to stay home with kids, but that is a whole other debate...

Of course some people have minimum wage jobs, I just have never personally known ANYONE who was working a minimum wage job, living alone, trying to make it work with no other income. I've known college kids living 2 to 4 per apartment, and I've known couples with a roommate, like you guys, and a single mom who also got welfare and food stamps and medicaid, but I've never met anyone who tried to pay bills all on their own that way with nothing and nobody else.

If you think I'm wrong that's fine but I don't see what's "Shocking" here...

[the-leh.livejournal.com]

In the show, both people were working a minimum wage job. They ended up $1,200 in debt because of the health issues that came up while they were doing the show.

I don't know how to tell you why I am so shocked by your position without being rude or whatnot. I just thought you would have a different take on it.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

Honestly I saw it a long time ago, and not all the way through.


I have an idea that what you're implying is, you thought that as a Christian person I would be Christ-like and about helping people, not leaving them high and dry. I understand that, but I don't think you're seeing that I am ALL ABOUT helping people - individual people I come across and local places that give aid to those who walk in through the door. I think everyone should do that. Whether it's handing the homeless guy a $20 and a hot chocolate, taking all your used stuff to donate rather than throw out, volunteering at shelters, giving 10% to tything, supporting a family because they need it and you can, paying your niece's way through college, organizing something in your town that does something for people that you care about - I love all of those things and try to teach my kids to love them.

I think that politicians, though, are always in it for personal gain to some degree, and governments are always going to be slow moving, inefficient machines...It's like the way a small business is a beautiful thing, but blow it up into a big business and you end up with something horrendous, like Walmart. I don't shop at Walmart. Ever. Even if it means we wait til the next day when something else is open, or do without because we can't afford it somewhere else. Because they push and promote treating low income workers horribly, and I can't stand that. I don't buy Nestle, even when I have a craving or it means I have to make the mousse from scratch, because they hurt poor mothers and babies in places where those mothers don't know any better or have options.

I care about people a whole lot. I just have a different opinion about how to put that into action. I think if people reached out, as Christians or just as caring human beings, to each other, on a local level, a LOT less people would fall through the cracks than will in a nationwide program of any kind, which will by it's very nature not be able to take individuals into account to the same extent. And which will likely, by it's very nature, make local support networks dwindle away as people feel this other thing is taking it's place (and their dollars).

[the-leh.livejournal.com]

But everyone doesn't reach out on a local level. Not everyone is like you and me. Just because we are good people, doesn't mean everyone else is.

SOMETHING has to be done about our health care. It's crazy wrong for them to be making millions off the backs fo the American public.

Sure, there are plenty of flaws in socialized medicine, but what we have going on now, is so much worse. Sometimes it's a matter of choosing between to evils.

I don't shop at Wal Mart either, and, afaik, I don't buy Nestle (they own a lot of stuff, so, I'm not sure about everything I buy but I don't buy processed food and I think my water isn't Nestle, but it might be. Most of the bottled water here is made by them, unfortunately).

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

What would happen, though, if every left-wing liberal person who is outraged right now in this country stopped pumping money, blogging time, and free ads via signs and stickers into their politician of choice, and started donating their money instead to...
-Lions Clubs, that provide free glasses and lasik surgeries to people like my poor grandpa in Key West that just had it done for free
-Planned Parenthood, if that is what they believe in
-the Make a Wish Foundation

and the gazillion other things like that out there? Why are we putting all the money, the ads and the energy into selling candidates for months from now while right now, TODAY, each and every one of us has people in our town who could benefit if we just shifted our focus? I know it's supposed to be as an investment in a president that will ignite change that will benefit everyone, but what happens if, in the end, the president either A. is not the one they're hoping for, B. doesn't do what they promised, or C. CAN'T do what they'd like because of being veto'd or otherwise held up by all the hooplaw that holds up presidents' good intentions? Then all the money, the time, and the energy went to waste, and the needy are still without help, because when the government can't do it, we hold up our hands and say, "I guess we're all out of luck".

OR, say the investment IS a good one. The new president does INCREDIBLE things and starts up socialized healthcare, raises the miminum wage, pumps money into education. BUT, as a result, companies are no longer sending samples to doctors because they don't have a "product to sell", so doctors no longer have free samples to distribute. People no longer have the freedom to say what care is necessary for them, or when they should get it, or even in some cases to choose their own doctors. The price of everything goes up in response to the raised wages such that we're right back where we started again, like it always has in the past. And we see that, while more money helps schools for sure with some things like paying teachers better and getting supplies that they need, it hardly solves the problems we're having with violence, testing-based curriculums and so forth.

What I like most about capitalist society is my ability to "vote with my dollars". I can boycott companies I don't support. I can spend my money at places I feel good about - the local family owned bookstore, for instance, and tithing, and cruelty-free animal products that will create more of a demand for same at the grocery store. When everything is based on taxes and legislated, though, my ability to "vote with my dollars" is being taken from me, and suddenly I am responsible by law for PAYING FOR everything from unecessary cesareans and routine circumcisions to formula samples and the crap they give (most, I know some programs are improving) WIC moms. While it's true that hospital revenue accounts for some birth policies in the US, it is as bad or worse in parts of Canada where it's socialized. I don't think peoples' ingrained, society-based fears will suddenly go away if healthcare changes, I really don't. Not this generation, at least.

Off topic, but wtf is UP with Nestle's trillions of covert operations? Geez. They own most of the Fl bottled water companies, too. And Lancome, which used to be my favorite (and only) makeup!

[the-leh.livejournal.com]

Well, Hilary was mostly funded by lawyers, the health care industry, and some from her husband. I think the outraged liberals funded Obama :P

In all seriousness though, I don't think we're going to agree on this, we just won't.

Yeah, Nestle is really annoying. I seriously can't find a bottled water company that they don't own. at least, not in my local stores.